Transitory
by The Trickster Author
Summary: Regardless of time or space, the soul persists - though memory does not. While you might not remember, history has a way of repeating itself and certain souls often echo long into the future. In Little Whinging, Surrey, one such echo begins the long and perilous journey of a Thief. (Again.)


_**Scars**_

Harry Potter grew up largely without adult supervision. When he was much, much younger, before he'd even started primary school, Petunia used to keep a strict eye on everything he did. She was suspicious and distrustful of him and he'd grown up knowing only of constant surveillance or the dark cupboard he slept in. Being sent to school was such a sudden, shocking freedom that for a long time he found himself completely at a loss, having been given leeway that he didn't quite comprehend. It made him uncooperative, sometimes, and the teachers had soon labelled him as a troublesome child. He was the first suspect for mischief, and none of the other students liked him at all.

As he came to understand it, he was expected to be badly behaved at school. His relatives never told him otherwise (actually, they seemed almost pleased… if an absence of aggression could be called pleased), and so he assumed that it was what he was supposed to do.

The teachers often accused him of making mischief, and so he made mischief. When things went missing he was often suspected as the culprit, and so he began stealing things. When he was found in places he wasn't supposed to be, the immediate assumption was that he was up to no good or trying to skip class.

So he skipped class. He skipped school altogether.

This is how it began. He did what was expected of him, because he came to understand that that was what he was supposed to do.

But as time went on…

Well, freedom is a heady thing. It's heavy weight and weightlessness at the same time; it's addictive. The rush when someone tries to take away your freedom to do what you want to do, that mixture of terror-rage-thrill is almost exciting. And soon enough, what he had _wasn't enough_.

He wanted more. He wanted to be truly free – able to go where he wanted, do what he wanted, whenever he wanted. He _craved_ freedom, coveted it, wanted it with such a desperate feverishness that it made him dizzy.

So as he grew, he skived off more; he stole more valuable things; he wandered further and further from the relative safety of home. He became more vicious in order to protect himself from the threats of his neighbourhood -bullies and stray dogs and _concerned adults_ ; he became wily and clever in order to escape school and teachers and occasionally Surrey's pudgy police officers; he became rude in order to drive people away before they became hindrances.

( _He tested the Dursleys, just once. He wanted to see what he could get away with. He never dared to try it again._ )

He pushed his boundaries, his limits.

One day, he pushed too far.

It only takes one mistake, really. One misstep to topple him from his tower of arrogance, to make him realise there were _others_ and that they were _better_.

He was a train ride from Surrey. He was high off the thrill of being somewhere new, so far from home. It had never occurred to him that he was not unique, that there were other, older and _stronger_ people who did what he did -who did it better. It never occurred to him that other people could also do what they wanted, and had been doing it for longer.

It never occurred to him that he should be more careful, alone in an unfamiliar environment where people didn't know him and no one would notice if he went missing.

He had slipped down the wrong alley, he supposed. Had set his eyes on the wrong mark – had stolen from the wrong person.

He had never been cut before. He'd never had a knife waved at him before. He'd never been so frightened before.

The Dursleys inspired a different sort of fear. He was scared of what they would do, but he was also aware that there was only so much they _could_ do. They were awful people but they were _law-abiding citizens_ and they had a reputation to keep up as nice, normal folks who'd generously taken in their orphaned nephew who had unfortunately turned into a delinquent -through no fault of their own, of course.

But there, in that alleyway, when home had seemed suddenly so very, very far away and the man he'd tried to pickpocket advanced on him with that knife dripping scarlet on the concrete, he'd been honestly _afraid_.

He had thought he was going to die.

He recalled thinking, in the following minutes, that maybe that would have been better.

Later, when he'd found himself stumbling onto Privet Drive's doorstep with one hand clamped over his wounded eye and the other shaking uncontrollably and the memory of how he got there distant and not-quite-there, he would think fleetingly of the pain, the blood and the peculiar sound of a neck snapping and vicious, terrified satisfaction. And then his Aunt opened the door, shrieked and showed the first shred of concern for his wellbeing she'd ever shown by rushing him to the local hospital.

The wound scarred. Of course it did, Petunia's care only went so far as to make sure the stitches didn't become infected – by throwing a bottle of disinfecting alcohol at him and telling him to rub it in. It was large and wicked-looking and he'd find himself staring at it in the mirror and remembering what the price of carelessness and arrogance was. He came to take pride in it -the mark of a lesson well-learnt, of his survival.

He gained many more scars after that, but the fierce-looking one stretching from hairline to cheek-hollow on the right side of his face was, he considered, the very first.

(The tiny little thing that once marked his forehead was forgotten, as most things from childhood are. It had been carved over, made more gruesome, turned into something new and much more impressive. In this way, it mirrored his own future: what was once an unenviable destiny was overwhelmed with events triggered as a consequence of his own actions. Voldemort was little concern to a Thief King on the rise, after all.)

* * *

A/N: So I've been sitting on this for a while. I'm trying to dig up the motivation to write more, or improve what I have. I already have plans for Har-bear here being involved in Battle City, which would be just after fifth year for him. Let's say Mokuba would be a great deal safer for a while.


End file.
